That Damned Car
by Crystal Dawn
Summary: A short fic about Aya's car. Yes, the Fuujmobile. I think this can only be accurately described as Car/Aya. Unfortunately, The Fuujmobile does not have a pairing search function associated with it. Remastered, now with better spelling and formatting!


**Disclaimer:** Characters not mine. Although, admittedly, some of the crap that happens here actually happened to me while trying to work on my car. This is my way of venting. X_x And, no, I'm not sure if the Japanese have WD-40, but I'm sure that if they don't, they have an equivalent. Everyone needs WD-40!

That Damned Car

by Crystal Dawn Phoenix

Shining chrome. High gloss white paint job. Rally wheels. V-8 350 engine. Convertible top. Aya Fujimiya looked at his car: dull, grayish paint job, old wheels, tiny V-4, with a hatchback that didn't latch properly and a water pump with a bad bearing. No, it was none of those other good things, but God, didn't he wish.

Actually, he did. He wished a *lot*. Currently, wrench and instruction manual in hand, he wished that he didn't have to do what lay before him. He stared at the brand new water pump on the ground in front of the car. Granted, he'd never done more to his car than change the oil (on a good day, if he wasn't otherwise occupied), but he was also too thrifty (read: cheap) to take it to a mechanic. Besides, it was just a water pump - how hard could it be to install?

Judging from the instruction manual, not very. It gave a very detailed description of just what had to be done to his little Toyota. He'd need to disconnect the battery and remove a few belts and bolts, but other than that, it didn't seem like a problem at all. And just to be on the safe side, he'd even gone to the trouble of parking it around back of the flower shop. The last thing Aya wanted was to be hounded by annoying fangirls, or worse, obnoxious co-workers, while he was trying to concentrate.

More than just a little put out at the prospect of having a boiled-dry radiator from lack of a water pump bearing, Aya opened the manual and began to read. The first step? Disconnect the negative battery terminal. Not too difficult. With a firm, steely determination, Aya adjusted his crescent wrench and opened the hood.

Immediately, he was confronted with his first snag: what looked like it was supposed to be the bolt to the terminal was set against a square face, making it impossible for him to get his wrench into it. That was quickly rectified, however, when he found some bolts an inch back that were possible to remove and would do the same thing. So he adjusted his wrench to those bolts and turned them until they came out. Once those were gone, he removed the negative cable and the ground. There. The battery was disconnected. Aya felt a quiet, gloating satisfaction. This was going to be easier than he'd thought.

The next step, however, proved to be capable of showing him otherwise. It *sounded* simple enough. All he had to do was take four nuts off a hub and the fan would be disconnected. He could then, theoretically, pull the fan off, remove a few belts, and get to the damaged water pump. See? Simple.

The first nut came off without a hitch. Once again, quiet satisfaction. The second nut felt a little tight, but it too eventually came off. The third one was even more stuck, but it gave way eventually. The fourth one, however, proved to be his undoing.

After pulling with all his might at the errant nut and accomplishing nothing, Aya gritted his teeth and reached for his secret weapon: WD-40. He lubed the nut up as best he could with the spray-on lubricant (subsequently ignoring or not even bothering to notice all the really bad jokes that could be made over it) and began to try to turn it again.

This time, not only did the nut not budge, but the wrench *did*.

For those of you who have never turned a wrench, this can only mean one of two things. You may have gotten the wrong sized wrench, naturally. Otherwise, you probably have just rounded the flats off of your nut. Which makes the edges round. Which gives the wrench nothing to get leverage on. Which leaves you with a nut that won't come off.

Understandably, after he got a good look at the nut to confirm that, yes, it was indeed stripped, Aya swore. He swore a lot. He also hit his head on the hood of the car. Which caused him to swear more. Then, he realized that he probably needed more tools. Which in turn caused him to swear even more.

Irritated that his efforts had been thwarted so quickly, Aya turned and stomped through the back entrance of the Koneko. He made his way through the storeroom which held the flowers that were waiting to be put on display, and went into the front, where he knew Ken, Youji, and Omi would be. Slamming the storeroom door open, he emerged in the flowershop proper. As expected, there was the usual flock of afterschool fangirls milling about. Thankfully, none of them noticed Aya much; he believed that if they had, he would probably have wrung their necks at that moment. In much this manner, he stalked over to Youji. Surely, Youji would have something for this - he knew about cars.

Youji, at the moment, was surrounded by at least fifteen fangirls. Even though he liked to say that underaged girls weren't his thing, Aya noticed that he didn't actually actively *try* to get rid of them. Damned pedophile. He shoved a few of them out of the way and ignored their awestruck "ooohs" and "aaaahs" as he approached Youji. He stopped directly in front of his blonde teammate and gave him an icy, nasty glare.

Youji blinked, noticing the shorter man giving him a withering look. He briefly wondered if he was going to be reprimanded for smoking in the shop again, but the look Aya was giving him didn't suggest that. It suggested that he was likely about to stab someone through the head, but Youji couldn't think of anything he'd done to deserve that. Today, anyway.

"What?" Youji asked.

"Fixing car... water pump is dead... rounded a nut off... need something to take it off..." Aya mumbled, too aggrivated to form coherent sentences. Youji blinked for a second, trying to figure out exactly what Aya was grousing about. When he'd managed to put the randomly strung-together words in some understandable order, he blinked and it visibly dawned on him.

"Oh, you need a pair of vice grips?" Youji finally said, ignoring the fangirls. They had begun to swoon at all the technical, manly, mechanic-y things the two very pretty florists had been spouting at each other. That and the fact that Aya had been talking about nuts and taking things off. The 'vice grips' sounded pretty kinky, too - whatever those were.

Aya failed to respond. He just sorta nodded and grunted. Youji jerked his thumb to the storeroom Aya had came in through a few moments earlier.

"There's a toolbox under the worktable back in the storeroom," he said, "There's a pair of vice grips in that." Aya blinked, signalling that he understood. A second before he turned to walk away, though, Youji stopped him.

"So, why don't you just take the car to a mechanic?" Youji asked. Aya glared at him. Why should he want to pay an arm and a leg to get someone else do something that he could easily do himself in an afternoon? Preposterous.

Huffing, and looking much like a bird whose feathers had been ruffled, Aya turned and walked back to the storeroom, slamming the door on his way out. Youji shrugged and went back to attempting to look cool and keep the fangirls from groping him (too much, anyway) at the same time.

Aya picked up the grips and headed back outside. Once back at the car, he gave it his most intimidating glare and headed back under the hood. The car, he soon found, was not an easily intimidated opponent.

Not only could he not figure out how to get a good grip on the slippery, WD-40'd nut, but he managed to mangle it even worse than it already had been. After trying for a good fifteen minutes to get a grip on it, Aya gave up and threw the grips into the back wall of the flowershop. They fell with a loud, metallic 'thunk' into the trashcans underneath the spot they'd struck on the wall.

At this point, Ken stuck his head out the back door to see what all the commotion was. Aya stared at him, daring him to say anything. And, as with most people who are dared anything, Ken eventually followed through on it.

"Ummm, is everything okay?" he asked sheepishly, noticing the dent Aya had made in the brick wall with the vice grips.

"No," Aya replied simply, not bothering to move. He didn't stop staring coldly at Ken, either. Eventually, Aya figured he'd take the hint and leave. Then Aya would be able to go back to swearing at the car.

"Maybe it's not any of my business, but..." Ken began.

"It's not," Aya confirmed coolly, not waiting on him to finish his sentence.

"...wouldn't it just be less hassle to get a new car?" Ken went on without missing a beat.

Aya stared, irritated at his co-worker. Okay, maybe it was kind of old. Maybe the hatchback didn't latch quite right. Maybe it did break down a lot. Maybe he did have to put it in the shop quite often. Maybe there were springs sticking out of the seats at odd angles. Maybe he couldn't make dramatic entrances by jumping out of it. Maybe it was just a little... uncool. But, dammit, it was paid for, and it was *his*! And he'd be damned if he'd pay for a new one... or to send this one to the mechanic anymore!

Frustrated at such a stupid question, Aya grabbed the nearest thing he could find - his damnable crescent wrench - and hurled it at Ken. Ken, being a former goalie and all, pulled his head inside with an "eep!" just in time. Another dent in the brick back wall of the shop, another clang in the garbage cans, another forty swear words.

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

At least another three hours went by. Aya couldn't be sure. It had felt like an eternity, and dusk was starting to fall. However, irritability and obsession drove him on. The nut wound up coming off, finally, but there was no way it was ever going to be of any use for *anything* anymore. That found its way into the trash can, too, along with the crescent wrench and the vice grips. Aya wound up having to borrow more of Youji's tools, including several wrenches, most of which were standard and not metric, thus irritating him further. To top it all off, he'd not made all that much progress after the incident with the stripped nut. Because now, he'd managed to get the fan loose, only to find that the alternator was stuck instead.

Right about the point at which Aya had begun to crawl onto the engine of his small car so that he could stomp on the wrench attached to another stuck nut, Omi stuck his head out the door. He stopped short, however, when he saw Aya attempting to jump on a wrench at the same time as he was trying to squat on the engine of the car.

"Ehhhh, Aya-kun?" was all Omi could really think of to say at the bizarre sight of theiir fearless leader trying to attack a helpless wrench. Aya looked up, a strange, red hazed, glazed-over look in his eyes. Omi backed up a little, chuckling nervously and rubbing the back of his head. After a few uneasy seconds of Aya not saying anything, Omi finally decided to break the silence himself.

"We, uhh, we decided to go ahead and order dinner," he said nervously, "It's only takeout Chinese, but, ummm, want anything?" Aya mumbled something that Omi thought sounded distinctly like "blood", but he couldn't be sure. At any rate, it wasn't Chinese.

"Oh, well, if you want anything, let me know," Omi stammered, quickly disappearing and shutting the door. A new torrent of cursing followed the young man into the house, as well as the sound of Aya hitting his head on the hood of the car again.

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

Another three hours passed, bringing darkness with them. Another three hours, and all Aya had to show for it was that he'd finally disconnected the alternator, gotten more tools from Youji, and scraped all the knuckles on his left hand. And that just hurt like a sonuvabitch. He was currently trying to nurse his injured hand and remove a rather tricky set of belts at the same time, without breaking either. Personally, he desperately wished that he could just go upstairs and get his katana from his room for this, but alas, that would kind of defeat the purpose.

So, understandably, when he heard the back door open again, he was ready to hurl the untouched, brand new water pump at the trespasser - and he fully intended *not* to miss this time. However, mid-way through reaching down to pick up the unused, 30,000 yen paperweight, he stopped and looked up to see who was in the doorway. Lo and behold, it was neither an obnoxious co-worker nor an idiot looking for his own death, nor a combination of the two. It was Tomoe Sakura, holding a small bag that obviously contained food.

Aya blinked and almost went for the water pump again. Then he reminded himself that it was not only bad form to kill girls that weren't killing other people and to damage the part he needed for his car, but that she might be useful to him in the future. For, y'know, cooking and bringing food and... stuff. Then there was more swearing. Only this time, he did so quietly, because he didn't want to scare the girl with the food off.

"Aya-san?" Sakura asked, smiling sheepishly, "I came over to see if you wanted any of the yakisoba I made and Omi-san said you were out here." Aya didn't say anything. Instead, he continued glaring, neither knowing nor caring if the girl was intimidated by it. It wasn't that he couldn't *use* some food right now - but, dammit, he wanted to finish the car tonight. Undeterred, Sakura began to walk toward him curiously.

"Oh, are you working on your car?" she asked, looking at the water pump at Aya's feet, "I didn't know you knew how to do that sort of thing..." She blinked curiously as Aya looked on, aggravated. Must. Not. Strangle. Defenseless. Girl. With. Food.

If Sakura noticed his ire, she didn't say anything. Instead, she craned her neck to see under the hood of the car. Since it was dark now and the only light they had was a streetlight, it wasn't that great of a view. She blinked a few times before looking back up at Aya.

"Don't you have a droplight?" she asked sweetly. Aya gave her a look that said that, not only did he not know what she was talking about, he probably didn't care. In response, however, he gave her a perturbed grunt.

"I guess you could work without one, if you're that sure of yourself," she said warily. Aya wasn't about to go inside to borrow yet another tool from Youji - after all, who could tell when or if that freak was going to decide he wanted 'payment' for the use of his tools?

"Aya-san," she finally said, after peering at the engine for a few more seconds, "Are you having trouble with it? Is it the water pump?" If he hadn't been so aggravated at the car and at being interrupted yet again, he might have been surprised by her question. Instead, he snorted and folded his arms.

Sakura was still unfazed, and if Aya hadn't been so irritated, he probably would have been distressed by his inability to intimidate such a small girl. As it was, however, she shoved the yakisoba into his arms and leant over the engine to get a better look. Puzzled, he simply took the yakisoba and stared.

"Do you have a fifteen millimeters?" she asked, distracted. Still confused, Aya picked up one of the wrenches he'd snagged from Youji. Sakura took it and looked at it disapprovingly.

"You only have standard?" she asked, disappointed, "I'm sorry. But I guess a 9/16 is close enough..." And with that, she began to loosen the hub that held the belts in place. A few seconds later, she thrust the belts into Aya's hands as well.

"Keep up with these," she said sweetly, going right back to what she was doing. After a few more minutes, Aya found himself trying to hold the damaged water pump as well. That, however, proved too cumbersome, so he had to set it down.

Sakura began humming to herself as she took the new water pump out of its box, found the gaskets that went with it, and began to set it in its place. After another few minutes, she had it bolted into place and took the belts back from Aya. Fifteen minutes later, she had everything, right down to the battery, hooked back up and ready to go.

Just to be sure, Aya started the car and let it run; it actually sounded a little bit *better* than before he'd started taking it apart. He didn't know if he should just be happy that the car ran again, or if he should be really put out because he'd just been shown up by a girl. Completely dumbfounded, he got out and walked to the front of the car. Sakura watched the engine run, smiling contentedly at it.

"Just fill your radiator with equal parts antifreeze and water, and it should work just fine," she said sweetly. Aya continued to stare at her as if she had lobsters crawling out of her ears.

"Where did you learn to do this?" he asked, finally able to articulate an entire sentence. Sakura blinked at him, obviously not having expected that question.

"Oh, my father had me help him work on cars with him when I was small," she said happily, looking down at her hands, "Darn it, I wasn't planning on getting dirty tonight. Oh no!" She glanced at the watch on the inside of her wrist. "It's already half past nine! I still have homework to do!" she said, "I wasn't expecting to stay this long. Please enjoy the yakisoba, Aya-san! I'll see you later!" She gave him a quick bow, and with that, started to run for the back door of the flower shop. A few seconds later, she disappeared inside, leaving Aya holding a small bento box of yakisoba and wondering what the hell kind of Japanese girl worked on cars.

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

"Oi, Aya!" Youji called, sticking his head out the back door of the flower shop. He did so cautiously, knowing better than to leave himself an open target for one of Aya's not-so-well aimed wrenches. He also sounded a bit perturbed.

"What th' hell did you do to Sakura-chan?" he called, "She just ran through the shop covered in grease! And what are you doing to make all that noise? Aya?!" Youji stopped talking, however, when he saw exactly where the noise he had referred to was coming from.

Because Aya had closed the hood of the car and was currently bashing his head against it.


End file.
